Libertarian Anarchy

Despite incredible advances in knowledge and technology over the past few decades, living standards have actually declined (also see here and here). Taken alone, this makes no sense—comparable advances in the past, such as the industrial revolution, have sparked enormous increases in prosperity. On top of falling living standards, civilization is crumbling: war, poverty, crime, debt, disease, social dysfunction, family breakdown, hedonism, etc. Why are so many things going wrong, despite unparalleled advances in knowledge and technology? This is the great unanswered question of our time. Keep reading...

A constitutionally limited government provides the services of security and justice. To accomplish this, it establishes a system of national defense, police and courts—these are the means of production of security and justice. By definition then, limited government is socialist (i.e., state ownership of the means of production.) It’s also socialist in the sense that the provision of security and justice is socialized: the costs and benefits are collectively shared. Furthermore, these services are funded through involuntary taxation and private citizens are coercively prohibited from competing in their provision. Government is inherently a coercive socialist monopoly. Therefore, constitutionalists are socialists, as they support limited government. (To be precise, constitutionalists are coercive socialists—I have nothing against voluntary socialism, which is perfectly legitimate.)

The thing is, they also consider the principles of liberty to be important. Constitutionalists believe that markets are better than central planning, but that government is necessary to protect liberty—that government is a necessary evil. This contradictory position mainly exists because they lack the understanding of the logical conclusion of the principles of liberty: the stateless society. But rather than just rejecting them as statists, we should reach out to them as potential libertarians in the spirit of gain orientation. Fortunately, an open mind and a little education are all that’s needed to arrive at a consistent pro-liberty position. Keep reading...

Good morning and welcome to the February, 2009 edition of the Market Anarchist Blog Carnival.

David Gross presents Like the withered stalk of a cattail posted at The Picket Line. David argues that there is growing awareness of the corruption in the central institutions of authority — government, economy, media, etc.

Andrew Q presents A Libertarian Defense of Property Redistribution posted at Capital Goods. He discusses Carson and Rothbard’s arguments on land theft and property redistribution.

Andrew Q also presents A Critique of Agorism posted at Capital Goods. Agorism is a novel strategy and merits further debate and discussion.

Scott Hughes presents What Freedom Means to Me posted at Philosophy Forums.

Francois Tremblay presents History is written by the idiots posted at Check Your Premises. He discusses the teaching of history and cautions anarchists in their choice of media.

John Petrie presents Toy lead-content regulations hurt small toy makers posted at Blagnet.net. Unsurprisingly, government regulations benefit big business while screwing the little guy.

John Petrie also  presents Saving is good, not bad, for American economy posted at Blagnet.net. John discusses the ecognorance of Keynesian pump-priming and the vilification of saving.

David Z presents Legalize ALL Drugs posted at No Third Solution.

Continuing with drug prohibition, see my article The Case Against Drug Prohibition. Not only is prohibition ineffective, but it causes crime, corruption, and increases the risk of overdosing.

That’s all for this edition, which will be the last due to a lack of interest. Thanks to everyone who submitted.

I will be hosting the February edition of the Market Anarchist Blog Carnival.  The Carnival is designed to promote  pro-market or anti-state ideas by collecting articles from Market Anarchist blogs.

Check out the January edition, hosted at Democracy Sucks.

Send your submissions here before Feb. 28.  Pro-market or anti-state viewpoints only.

This is going to be the last edition, due to a lack of interest, so send in your best writing. Let’s make this the greatest Market Anarchist Carnival of them all!

I’ve uploaded a new article – The Case Against Gun Control.

Here’s the abstract:

Gun control violates the right of individuals to control their own property. It also violates economic law. Enforcement of gun control creates incentives to produce guns on the black market. Gun control causes crime and corruption, whereas gun ownership actually deters crime, and is a check against tyrannical government. In a free society, weapons can be controlled through voluntary, peaceful means.

I wrote this after reading John Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime. I wasn’t impressed with his empirical approach, so my goal was to build a case against gun control based on economic principles and theoretical, a priori arguments.

I’ve uploaded another article – The Case Against Drug Prohibition.

Here’s the abstract:

Prohibition violates the right of individuals to control their own bodies, and violates economic law. Any increased enforcement of prohibition creates greater incentives to produce drugs. Prohibition causes crime and corruption. It increases the potency and reduces the quality of drugs, causing consumption-related deaths. The solution to drug abuse is not aggressive violence, but voluntary cooperation.

This article is primarily based on the arguments from Mark Thornton’s The Economics of Prohibition (PDF here). I was also inspired by Milton Friedman’s arguments in his interview on drugs. I think readers will be most surprised by the arguments that prohibition is self-defeating and increases the potency of drugs.

Here’s the first article from my new articles section – The Case for Free Trade.

Here’s the abstract:

Free trade is both morally and practically superior to protectionism. First, protectionism violates the right of individuals to engage in voluntary exchange. Second, specialization and trade are beneficial whenever there is absolute or comparative advantage between individuals. Finally, protectionism is a negative-sum game: it makes everyone worse off, including the “protected” industries.

For those readers familiar with the Paul Craig Roberts/capital mobility debate, I’d like to know what you think of my critique (in the “Objections” section).

Check out the new Articles page for “Systematic, timeless, and comprehensive expositions of libertarian philosophy.”

My goal is to create a one-stop resource where someone can learn the main tenets of libertarian anarchism. One of the problems with the libertarian movement is that it is lacking an “argument database” where a newbie can find the answer to every one of their questions. Sure there are websites like Libertarian Nation and Mises.org, or books like Human Action and Man, Economy, and State, but the reader still has to do a lot of work putting the pieces of the puzzle together. I want to present a systematic, step-by-step analysis of the premises and conclusions of both libertarian and statist arguments. By doing the heavy lifting, hopefully I can shorten the learning curve and multiply the progress of the libertarian movement (at least concerning education).

There are no comments in the Articles section, so I will make a blog post for each article, where you can comment.

My first three articles are up:

• The Case for Free Trade
• The Case Against Drug Prohibition
• The Case Against Gun Control

I plan to write future articles on: price controls, the case against monopoly, education, roads, health care, money, courts and police, and more.

“The true test, then, of the radical spirit, is the button-pushing test: if we could push the button for instantaneous abolition of unjust invasions of liberty, would we do it? If we would not do it, we could scarcely call ourselves libertarians, and most of us would only do it if primarily guided by a passion for justice. The genuine libertarian, then, is, in all senses of the word, an “abolitionist”; he would, if he could, abolish instantaneously all invasions of liberty, whether it be, in the original coining of the term, slavery, or whether it be the manifold other instances of State oppression. He would, in the words of another libertarian in a similar connection, ‘blister my thumb pushing that button!’” – Murray N. Rothbard, “Why Be Libertarian?“

The button-pushing question is the test of radicalism and consistency. Being an abolitionist is what it means to be a libertarian. As libertarians we must advocate the instantaneous abolition of injustice, because any form of gradualism in theory means legitimizing the continuation of injustice.

But some have objected that pushing the button would be a mistake. If people still believe government is necessary, they argue, then another government will simply take over, and the resulting chaos will negate any possible gains. Keep reading...

Are humans smarter than yeast? In this interview about peak oil, Richard Heinberg tries to show us a parallel between yeast and humans:

“If we put yeast in a bottle of grape juice, they’d be eating up the sugar in the grape juice, consuming their energy source, and at the same time they’d be giving off a waste product, namely alcohol, which would be poisoning them. So their numbers would proliferate until they ate up their energy sources and poisoned themselves with their waste product, and then they’d have a die-off. Were doing exactly the same thing with fossil fuels: we’re eating up our energy source as fast as we can, and we’re polluting our environment with the waste product. So, are we smarter than yeast? That’s the question.”

Now, if humans really were like yeast, this would be a frightening scenario. Keep reading...